Bradley Manning, the Lady Gaga–loving soldier who admitted to—illegally—leaking classified documents to unfriendly ghost Julian Assange begins his military trial today. “Manning has admitted to sending troves of material to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks and pleaded guilty to charges that would send him to prison for up to 20 years,” the Associated Press reports. “The U.S. military and the Obama administration weren’t satisfied, though, and pursued a charge of aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.” As Manning is just 25 years old, a life sentence would likely last a very long time.

Back in February, three years after WikiLeaks published thousands of (often hilarious) diplomatic cables, Manning pled guilty to 10 of the 22 charges levied against him. He explained to a military judge his initial decision to whistle-blow thusly:

I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan was a target that needed to be engaged and neutralized but people struggling to live in the pressure cooker of asymmetric warfare . . . I felt that I had accomplished something that would allow me to have a clear conscience about something I knew was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan every day.

Per The Guardian,the 12 counts to which Manning pleaded not guilty include “aiding the enemy” and providing “information to WikiLeaks he had ‘reason to believe . . . could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.’” To be fair: Kazakhstan, at least, was certainly put at a disadvantage.